What do you do when you realize you can’t find your $350,000 engagement ring? Do you contact the police? Well, if you don’t want the public exposure and your ring is not covered by insurance, you have one option left: hire your very own private detective to follow the trail of evidence and uncover the whereabouts of your 11 carat emerald-cut diamond ring.

Courtesy of buzzle.com

That’s what a Florida couple did last month when they realized their engagement ring was missing. They remembered last seeing the ring in the cup on their dresser just before Christmas, but were also sure that there were other people in their home at the time.

Enter private eye John Milano, a former police officer. The couple enlisted his expertise to locate the ring, and promised a $5,000 reward to the lucky individual who could lead them to the treasure.

Milano’s first order of business was conducting polygraph tests of everyone who was in the house at the time of the theft. In order to follow the footsteps of the thief, he also contacted local pawn shops in Martin County, Florida, as well as New York City – the diamond center of the country.

The only suspect to fail the polygraph test was 26-year-old house cleaner Cody Mejias. After that, she began to avoid Milano, thus prompting him to get serious about her potential guilt. “I hunted her down,” he said. “She refused to come in so we had to get the police involved.” Read More→